2,500,000 - cases worldwide
809,000 - cases in the US
171,810 - deaths worldwide
44,881 - deaths in the US
41 - days without other human contact
36 - nights outside singing God Bless America at 7 pm
That's the reality and this is what's on my mind...
Six months ago, we rescued a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel bearing a distinctly Disneyesque name. Caveys, however, are so anciently British that they are the only dog permitted full access to Parliament, a law which remains to this day. As a result, my devoutly Anglophile wife, resolved to find a moniker reflecting both that heritage and the epitome of contemporary UK-ness. Thus, the pup became Dame Maggie Smith or Maggie to her nearest and dearest. Given COVID-19, that means us - alone.
At 11:00 pm, Maggie and I go out. Same pattern every night: lightweight coat, iPhone and flashlight in left pocket, green doggy bags and house keys in right pocket, and - of late - a surgical face mask. Over the last six weeks I have noticed a change. The increased quiet was to be expected. But everything seems darker. Houses are unlit. Cars rarely drive up our street and few travel on the main boulevard outside our neighborhood. Fewer still pass on the nearby 405. And the air seems dense, as if the lack of light has become a physical barrier slowing all movement.
When I first noted this, I defaulted to what was left of my rabbinic brain and remembered my "favorite" Egyptian plague - number nine, darkness - not that I actually enjoyed any of them. Rather, what I appreciated were the literary commentaries of the medieval rabbis answering a Johnny Carson-like question - How dark was it? One of these Sages explained that the darkness doubled and redoubled upon itself. Another compared it to being inside of a mine. The great traveler Ibn Ezra, said he had actually seen it happen many times while on the Atlantic Ocean, obviously referring to fog banks he had experienced. Beyond just the description of the plague, these rabbinic riffs on the biblical story made the darkness substantial. But according to the text, Jewish homes were still blessed with light meaning that although the distanced external reader of the story is generally immersed in the rushing narrative on the way to freedom, those "living" in the narrative display little emotional content. We do not know how the darkness made the enslaved Israelites feel.
I know how the darkness makes me feel. When I walk with my dog, we do not dawdle. We share purpose. Maggie has to take care of her business. I have to take care of her outside so she can take care of us inside. It is not that we run, it is just that we have an intent to get done, move on, feel safe again. Truth to tell, for the first time I feel discomforted and frightened. I am hardly heroic, but my senses are definitely heightened over those 2250 steps. An overhead streetlamp that goes out makes me want to move faster, wishing that my beloved dog knew how to use a toilet. Once a convoy of four police cruisers flew by with quiet intensity, their blue and red lights spinning wildly, making me think I heard the world whisper, “danger ahead” and I pulled back into the darkness rather than leaning forward wondering where they were going. Worse still, a bike rider who recently glided silently along our path startled me so much that I admit there is now a box cutter in my right pocket. I have no idea what I would do with it, but it seems to be important if not comforting. When I let my guard down, I realize that it is not the ninth plague of darkness that I actually think about as we walk, but the 10th – the passing through of the Angel of Death.
Searching broadly through my rabbinic memory, I find myself unaware of disturbing descriptions or explanations of that fatal last evening in Egypt in spite of the glosses that movies serve up to us, the visual images of that night gifted by deMille and DreamWorks. So it is that I wonder what kind of pain exists within those dark windows of houses I pass. How much sadness focuses their conversations? Do they carry their smart phones around with them anxiously awaiting phone calls? While I am willing to be entirely wrong about these reflections, it is fair to say that my usual optimistic self has already passed over cynicism, in and out of pessimism, landing squarely on realism when I ask myself these questions.
They are not theoretical.
Within a 2-mile radius of our home are the neighborhoods of Inglewood, Culver City, Westchester and Playa Vista. According to the last LA Times report of COVID-19 cases, in our little area, 251 individuals have been stricken. Extrapolating the statewide number of cases and deaths that means that there have been nine deaths nearby. On my nightly walk, it is that truth that I feel.
And I carry my own truth as well, for night after night, when I plunge into the darkness thinking about that terrible last plague and hoping I walk under a symbolic portal like those doors in Egypt painted with blood to ward off the Angel of Death, I remember that I am the firstborn son of a firstborn son of a firstborn son.
What a POWERFUL last sentence ~wow!
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